Читать книгу The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht - Penrose Margaret - Страница 6

“How ridiculous!” Jessie cried. “That surely cannot mean you, Bertha.”

“Hush!” begged Amy. “It’s uncanny.”

Again the slow voice enunciated: “Bertha Blair will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”

“Criminy!” shouted Monty Shannon. “I know who that is. It’s Mr. Mark Stratford.”

“He is calling for you, Bertha,” said Jessie. “Can it be possible?”

“Something has happened!” gasped Bertha, starting for the door of the cottage. “Where is that child?”

“Never mind Henrietta. We will take care of her,” Jessie called after the worried girl, wishing to relieve her anxiety.

Bertha ran out of the house, and the next moment the Roselawn girls heard the car start. Bertha was being whisked away to Stratfordtown. The voice of Mark Stratford continued to repeat the call several times. Then he read the weather report, as expected.

“I can tell you one thing,” Jessie said eagerly to her chum and the Shannons. “Mark Stratford does not usually give out the announcements from that station. Now, does he, Monty?”

“No, ma’am, Miss Jessie. Only once in a while.”

“Then something has happened at the Blair house, or to Mr. Blair himself. That is why they send out this call, hoping that somebody down here would get it and tell Bertha.”

“Think! How funny it must feel to hear your name called out of the air in that way,” Amy remarked.

“Why, we had that experience ourselves,” Jessie said. “Don’t you remember? Mark thanked us publicly for finding his watch.”

“But that was not just like this,” replied Amy. “Anyway, there is something unsatisfactory about radio – and always will be – until we can ‘talk back’ as well as receive. See! If Monty had a sending set as well as a receiving, he could have answered Mark Stratford, and told him Bertha had heard the call and was starting home without any delay.”

“I am afraid something really serious has happened,” Jessie said. “Let’s go back home and call up Stratfordtown on the telephone.”

“We’ll take Hen along with us,” agreed Amy. “You said we’d take care of her.”

This the Roselawn girls did. When they set out from Dogtown in their canoe, Henrietta sat amidships. She was delighted to visit the Norwoods. She had stayed over night with Jessie before.

They passed the flotilla of tubs and barrels that the Dogtown children had set afloat. Mrs. Shannon would never see her washtubs again. Meanwhile the Costello twins and Charlie Foley had set out to walk around the lake and recover the big canoe from the place where it had drifted ashore on the other side.